Ten questions to ask a corporate gifting vendor

Corporate gifting in India has a low barrier to entry. Anyone with a supplier contact and a PDF catalogue can quote on your brief, and many do. That is not automatically bad — but you should know whether the company quoting is producing your kits or forwarding your email. The questions below are designed to make that obvious.

The ten questions

1. Can I see a mockup with our branding before I commit?

The single most useful question. Stock catalogue photos tell you nothing about how your logo sits on that box in your brand colour. A vendor who produces real mockups is doing design work in house; one who sends the manufacturer’s photos with your logo pasted on is not.

2. Is freight included, and how is it calculated?

Freight should be quoted separately on actuals, against your actual address split. A bundled per-unit price that "includes delivery" is carrying an estimate with margin in it, and it hides the cost of the thing most likely to change: where the kits go.

3. What changes at your MOQ thresholds?

Every gifting supplier has a quantity at which bespoke work becomes possible. Ours is 100 kits — below that, ready-stock kits with product and box branding; at and above, fully custom contents, packaging and white-labelling. A vendor who cannot state their threshold precisely has not thought about production.

4. Can you deliver to multiple addresses, and what does that cost?

Increasingly the real question, with hybrid teams. Ask specifically about individual home addresses across many pincodes, not just "multiple offices". The additional freight should be quoted on actuals against your real list.

5. Who owns my order, and how do I reach them?

Gifting projects have a compressed middle where four things happen at once. You want one named person accountable across sourcing, production and dispatch — not a shared inbox that routes you to a different person each time.

6. What is your production lead time, honestly?

Ask for the timeline in stages: design approval, production, kitting, dispatch. A vendor who gives a single number for "delivery" has not planned it. Near Diwali, ask what they will not be able to do at your timeline — a straight answer here is a strong signal.

7. Can you white-label completely?

If a recipient can tell who supplied the kit, it is not white-labelled. Check packaging, inserts, invoices and courier documentation, not just the box.

8. What happens if something arrives damaged or wrong?

Ask before you need to know. Who handles replacement, who pays freight on it, and how fast. Vagueness here is expensive later, particularly on time-bound festive delivery.

9. Are you quoting from stock or producing this?

Both are legitimate, and they have different risks. Stock is fast but constrained; produced is flexible but needs lead time. What matters is that the vendor tells you which one you are buying.

10. Can I speak to the person who will actually run this?

Sales and delivery are often different people at gifting companies. Meeting the second one before you sign tells you more than any deck.

Red flags

• Only stock photography. No mockups of your branding, at any stage.
• One bundled number. Freight, GST, personalisation and packaging all rolled into a single per-unit price with no breakdown.
• Vague MOQs. "It depends" with no threshold, on a question with a factual answer.
• Unrealistic timelines near Diwali. A vendor promising fully custom kits three weeks before the festival is either subcontracting blind or about to disappoint you.
• No physical address. A gifting company that will not say where it operates from is not one to hand your brand to.
• Pressure to decide immediately. Real production constraints get explained; they do not get used as a closing tactic.

A comparison checklist

Take this to every vendor you shortlist and fill it in the same way for each. Comparing on price alone is how gifting projects go wrong.